Today is my day at SF Novelists, where I wax not-so-eloquently on what makes a story. I also offer another free book, ’cause I like giving away books

http://www.sfnovelists.com/2009/06/24/whats-a-story/

Oh, and before I forget, it looks like Goblin Quest is going to be released in Kindle and other e-book formats on July 7.  I’m excited, since this means the entire goblin trilogy will finally be available in electronic format.

Finally, I’m told I should be getting page proofs for The Mermaid’s Madness [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] very soon now.  Between this and the rewrite on Red Hood, blogging and e-mail might be a little light for the next few weeks.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

• I hadn’t realized the Find Smudge contest was going to be quite so frustrating for folks.  I apologize for that.  I think I miscalculated the Challenge Rating on ol’ Smudge.  We did have four people who managed to find him, and the random number generator has picked a winner.  Congratulations, Sean!  I’ll e-mail you about your book.
• For everyone else who wants the answer, go to your web browser and type in the following URL: www.jimchines.com/[Your Name], replacing [Your Name] with — well, you get the idea.
• As noted on my Facebook page, the bright side of your dog eating all the crayons is that it’s much easier to find and scoop what she leaves in the lawn. (This discovery brought to you by our dork dog Jasmine.)
• As of Saturday evening, Red Hood’s Revenge 2.0 is finished, at 74,000 words and change.  Woo hoo!  Time to read the manuscript, write a short story I promised to do, memorize a big ol’ tome about desert life, and then start in on Red Hood 3.0.
• Finally, what better way to celebrate progress on book three than by giving you all a sneak peek at book two, which comes out in just under four months.  The first 5000 words or so of The Mermaid’s Madness [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] are now posted at: http://www.jimchines.com/Files/MM.pdf

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

1. For fun, I've been creating character LJ icons for my trio. Right now I'm using Pirates of the Carribean quotes, because they seemed to fit. I may post other quotes, or would it be better to just post the blanks and let folks apply their own text? Talia's is my favorite. Snow's bugs me a little because of the objectification factor, but it also sounds very much like something she'd say, so I chose to leave it. What do you think?



Please help yourself to any or all. (Though if you do, please mention me and/or the books in the keywords. Thanks!)

2. Last call for workshop submissions for the Penguicon Writing Workshop with yuki_onna and myself! Deadline is Sunday, 3/15.

3. I'm working on a follow-up post to the anger issue. Right now it's simmering in my brain, but hopefully I'll have something coherent soon. In the meantime, Mary Anne Mohanraj wrote up a long and thoughtful post about racism and privilege on John Scalzi's blog which I think is worth reading, even if you don't agree with 100% of what she says. She's planning a second post specifically for writers. I'm looking forward to it.

4. My son is going through a kiss-happy phase, which is both cute and endearing. Also, I seem to have caught his cold. I think these things may be related in some way, but I took some good drugs to deal with the congestion, and now I can't quite figure out the connection....

5. Going to see Watchmen tonight. Will cold drugs improve or take away from the experience, do you think?

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Guess what I just got permission to share!



There may be a few more small tweaks to the cover, but this is 99% final. Can I just say again that Scott Fischer rocks?

I love this one even more than the artwork from Stepsister. Snow is probably my favorite. I wrote that hat in part because I really just wanted to see her wearing it on the cover :-) As with the first book, there are so many great details. Talia's knife, the scabbard for Danielle's sword, Snow's choker and necklace, Danielle's shorter hair ... I love it!

Trying to fit an actual mermaid into the art along with three other characters was just too much, so Scott came up with this alternative, which I think works.

So what do you think?

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Online presence will be light this week. My cousin-in-law is staying with us, and I've got another friend in from Ohio that I'll be catching up with. Add the ongoing work stress (currently locked into Ludicrous Speed), and I just don't have much left.

One quick update, though. Some of you might remember a while back, when I posted the map I had sketched out for The Mermaid's Madness [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy]. Apparently the production designer looked at my black and white PDF and said it was done well enough to use in the book, assuming I could fix the dimensions.

So in addition to being the author, I'm going to be an official mapmaker for the next book. Strange, but I'll take it. I knew all of those hours making up maps for role-playing games would come in handy some day!

Hopefully I'll have some cover art to share pretty soon too :-)

In conclusion, 50,000 words and counting, baby!

Happy book day to Janni Lee Simner (janni), whose debut YA novel Bones of Faerie [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] was released today. Jane Yolen sez, "This book has one of the best first chapters I know—and the rest of the book more than lives up to its promise. Pure, stunning, it is impossible to put down or forget." Are you going to argue with Jane Yolen? I didn't think so. Info, reviews, and an excerpt at Simner's web site.

Moving to my own good news, I saw the almost-finished cover art for Mermaid's Madness today. Holy cheese! I think this one's even better than the Stepsister art, and I love the cover for Stepsister. I hate that it will probably be some time yet before this one is finished and ready to share... Also in today's e-mail, it looks like we have two more foreign deals on the table for goblin books. I'll say more once everything's signed. Nothing on the scale of the German deals from last year, but a very nice start to the day.

A number of folks, myself among them, were curious about how this whole Linsday Lohan/Disney rumor might affect things. I'm still waiting for last week's Bookscan numbers, and I'm not convinced there will be a noticeable spike, but I will say visits to my web site have increased 3x - 4x since the story started popping up. Almost all of the visits are Google searches for the book, but very few glance at more than one page on the site.

My Amazon sales ranking was down around 5000 the day after the story broke, which could be a fluke, but could indicate some extra movement.

One thing I've noticed as I peek at some of these sites, following the spread of the story, is just how nasty people can be regarding celebrities. Author "fame" is a relatively tame thing. Even someone like Neil Gaiman or George R. R. Martin can probably walk down the street and few people would recognize them. We all have our critics, and people can get vicious, but I've never seen anything like this directed at anyone on the author side. Five pages of comments in one case, half of which talk about how great the actress is, and half of which go off about how ugly, stupid, or "pornoriffic" she is, or in some cases just hoping she'll die.

I've always rolled my eyes at the obscene paychecks some of our Hollywood icons receive, but ya know, if I had to put up with some of this crap, I'd want to be well-paid too.

It makes me wonder what sort of changes I'd have to make if this movie thing ever did take off...

1. The Stepsister Scheme Auction to benefit NCADV ends tomorrow at 8:30 am (eastern time). If you've been waiting to see how high things would go, now is the time. The bidding is currently at $112.50 $125, which means I'll be throwing in at least one extra book as a bonus prize.

2. Tonight at 7:30 I'll be at Schuler Books in the Eastwood Plaza in Lansing, as a part of their NaNoWriMo Boot Camp Author Series. Along with Joe Borri (Eight Dogs Named Jack); Colleen Gleason (The Gardella Vampire Chronicles); Jill Gregory, award-winning author of over 30 novels; and Karen Tintori (Unto the Daughters, co-author with Gregory of Book of Names), we'll be talking about ... well, fiction and publishing and all that good stuff.

3. Spent some time last night writing up physical descriptions and wardrobes for my three princesses, to be passed along to the cover artist. This is an interesting process. We'll probably go for a similar style to book one, which means it's not necessarily tied to one scene. This is a good thing. I'm more interested in finding vivid images and getting a cover that leaps out, even if it's not 100% accurate to that one scene where they're on the boat fighting the mermaids. This process also reminds me that I'm not a visually-oriented person, and I'm definitely not a clothes-oriented person. Danielle could be naked for 80% of the book for all I wrote about her wardrobe. Yeah, I'll be adding a little more description during the rewrite :-)

4. The printer I use for my bookplates has hiked prices by about 40%. I'm not pleased. They still might be cheaper than other options, but not by much. Grumble.

5. Rewrite of Mermaid's Madness progresses, albeit slowly. I'd really like to take a week off of everything else and just finish this sucker once and for all, with no distractions and no interruptions. While I'm at it, I'd also like a pet dragon and a Green Lantern power ring. (Especially if the ring could have been used to clean out the U pipe beneath in the bathroom sink on Sunday. My son occasionally sneaks off to the bathroom to spit out food he doesn't like. This was not a pleasant chore... Just be glad I'm not a blogger who posts lots of photos!)

Stepsister Auction Update: Still at $107.50. Ah well -- I didn't really expect that price to jump to $1000 for the offer of a Tuckerization, but it would have been nice. And hey, there's still 5 days to go!

Grand Rapids Announcement: I'll be at the Grand Rapids Public Library tomorrow for their Celebration of the Book. I've got a talk from noon to 1:00 called "So You Want to be the Next J. K. Rowling", and then I'll be signing some books until two. They have lots of other fun stuff planned as well, from the looks of it.


So my editor and I talked about The Mermiad's Madness yesterday. She had a lot of good feedback about the beginning, particularly the backstory for my mermaid and the events leading up to the book. Some of these events shifted with each rewrite, and I did five different drafts of the book, so I can see how those details might have gotten messy. Sheila asked good questions, offered some thoughts about how all of this might work, or how does this particular issue affect this character, and what if that issue also caused such-and-such?

That's when I hung up on her.

...flashback for backstory...

My son has been sick again for the past week and a half. I haven't mentioned it, in part because I know he gets sick a lot, and I'm starting to feel like the only thing I ever post about the kids anymore is when he's sick. (Also, please understand I'm not looking for advice on what to do here. Any comments which go, "You should do _______ for your son" will be ignored or deleted.)

Anyway, he was on the mend until late Wednesday night. At that point, as far as we can tell, virus one had mostly given up and decided to pass the baton to virus two. Virus two was nastier, and resulted in no sleep for anyone that night. (You might recall me being a little goofier than usual yesterday? Isn't sleep deprivation fun!)

So in the midst of my chat with Sheila, my wife calls on line two. I (very nervously) ask if I can put my editor on hold for a quick moment, all the while thinking, What the frak are you doing? You don't put your editor on hold!!! Sheila says to go ahead, I jab the wrong button on the phone, and--

Son of a crap. Did that little green light just go out? Did I just hang up on my editor? Flaming dung on a stick, what's wrong with me???

Fortunately, we have signs of a happy ending. Sheila was very understanding, and in fact when I called her back to explain, she told me to go home and take care of my son, and we'd talk later. My son got his appetite back last night around bedtime, and had a better night last night, so he appears to be on the mend from virus #2. And I'll be talking to Sheila about the rest of her thoughts on Mermaid today at noon.

I've already got a few ideas about how to change the early scenes and backstory to fix some of the issues that came up in yesterday's chat. Hearing all of the things you missed can be painful, but this is the flip side. I love the mental process of finding solutions for those problems, and figuring out how to make the book that much stronger. Actually writing those solutions will be work, of course, but it should be very satisfying work.

Thanks for the fun Suggestions of DOOOOOM yesterday, by the way. You people have a seriously evil streak. Fortunately, I like that about you. I think all editor chats should be preceeded by Suggestions of DOOOOOM, because compared to all of those, the real conversation was pretty darn gentle :-)

I mentioned yesterday that The Stepsister Scheme [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] wouldn't include a preview of The Mermaid's Madness. However, the folks at DAW took a look and came up with an alternative. It sounds like we'll be putting a one-page ad for Mermaid at the back of the book.

Of course, we're far enough along that this is on a tight deadline, so they asked me to come up with a 70-120 word bit for Mermaid. Because I love you all, and also because I don't know what else to blog about today, I'm going to share.

There is an old story -- you might have heard it -- about a young mermaid, the daughter of a king, who saved the life of a human prince and fell in love.

So innocent was her love, so pure her devotion, that she would pay any price for the chance to be with her prince. She gave up her voice, her family, and the sea, and became human. But the prince had fallen in love with another woman.

The tales say the little mermaid sacrificed her own life so that her beloved prince could find happiness with his bride.

The tales lie.

Danielle, Talia, and Snow return in The Mermaid's Madness
Coming in October, 2009 from DAW Books

Personally, I'm pretty happy with it. I don't always like coming up with this sort of "Grab the reader" synopsis, but I think this one works.

I'm told we have a tentative release date of October 2009 for The Mermaid's Madness. As with most things in publishing, it's very possible this will change, but for now I'm pleased. 10/09 means I'll have a brand new book out when I do my very first Guest of Honor stint at Icon, which is good timing. It also means DAW is continuing to do slightly better than one book/year for me, which I like. I don't want to make people wait, and I don't want the between-book delay to be so long that readers forget all about what happened before. I'd love to see them coming out every six months, but that could cause problems too. Mostly because it takes me slightly more than a year to finish these books.

The math-inclined will realize this means the "every 10 months or so" schedule may eventually slow down. For now though, I still have some slack.

Now on to the fun stuff. Last night, because I couldn't stop myself, I joined a discussion where a writer was asking for help in promoting his book and getting some reviews and recognition. It turns out the book was from Publish America.

Some of you may recall I've mentioned PA before, both in serious discussion and in song and LOL form. Others of you might know the story of Travis Tea and the sting manuscript Atlanta Nights. In short, there are people who will tell you that the wrong publisher is worse than no publisher at all. Publish America is a good example.

So what do you do when you find yourself talking to a PA author who genuinely wants to know how he or she can go on to succeed? I ended up giving the following advice:

I would honestly love to provide helpful information for you. In this case, unfortunately, my advice would be to concentrate on the next book and find another publisher for that book. That is not meant as bashing. Right now, you have a book which is overpriced, put out by a publisher which is well-known for its negative practices. With very few exceptions, a PA book will not be stocked in bookstores. Few readers will pay such high cover prices for a new author. PA will not advertise, will not put out review copies, and basically will not do any of the things other publishers do to help sell the book. Furthermore, if you do decide to try to get an agent, a Publish America credit is at best considered no credit at all, and at worst can actually be counted as a mark against you.

Finding another publisher *will* improve things for you. Other publishers offer more reasonable pricing, which will encourage people to buy your work. They may send out review copies, which will help build word-of-mouth. I've been with a small POD publisher, a small commercial press, and a large publisher. They're all different, and at no time is it easy to succeed as a writer. But -- difficult as it is -- I think you'll have much better luck if you break away from this publisher.

That's some harsh advice right there. Give up on a published book? After we've poured so much of our time and hearts into the story? Especially when it's a first book. When you've written 5 or 10, it's a little easier to look back and realize some of them just weren't meant to be published. None of us have that kind of perspective in the beginning.

Denial is human. A lot of scam victims cling to their beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence, because holding on to those beliefs is easier than accepting the magnitude of the screw-up. (Not just talking about publishing scams here, by the way.) The scammer encourages that belief, attacking the attackers and spinning one deception after another to try to hold on to their victim.

So I wasn't at all surprised to have my comments brushed aside by the author. In fact, I completely expected it. He wasn't rude about it, which I appreciate. This just isn't what he wanted to hear.

Knowing I was going to be blown off, why bother at all? I figure there are several reasons. One is that other people read the forums, and if a lurker comes away a little wiser and with the knowledge to avoid making a mistake in the future, that's a good thing. Another is that even though the author isn't willing to hear this right now, maybe that will change in a year or two. Seeds can take a long time to sprout.

What I won't do is continue to debate the issue. I provided a few links, gave what information I thought was important, but what point is there to hanging around to fight with this author? I've been sucked into those squabbles before, and it's a waste of energy. Those who are open to listening will listen from the start. Those who aren't are only going to become more adament, more infuriated with how everyone bashes their publisher.

The last thing, and this really a reminder to myself, is to remember we all make mistakes. I've made tons. Having people tell me I'm an idiot didn't help. Having more experienced authors point out what I had done and help me to avoid those mistakes in the future? Well, I wouldn't be where I am today without that help.

I know I'm not the only one here to have gotten into these conversations. Care to share your thoughts, experiences, or suggestions for how to handle them?

With five minutes left on my lunch hour, I saved a clean copy of The Mermaid's Madness and sent it off to the editor and agent.

The book came in at about 101,000 words, which tells me I skimmed over an awful lot of detail in that first 67,000-word draft. I still need to draw a better map of Lorindar and the surrounding nations for the editor, but hey, nobody gave me a deadline on the map :-)

I could have kept working until 11:59 pm tonight and still technically made my deadline, but I had run out of issues to fix. Oh, if I start reading it again, I'm sure I'll find things, but at this moment I can't think of any serious changes or problems. I'm to the point where I'd be tinkering with the manuscript for the sake of tinkering, not because there's anything in paritcular I want to fix. For me, that's one of the signs that it's time to be done.

I imagine it will be at least several months before I hear back from the editor. That should work well. It gives me time and distance from the story, and I'll be able to look at it with fresh eyes. I suspect I'll find more things to improve as I'm going through and working on her suggestions, the end result being that you'll all have a wonderfully brilliant novel to read, probably around the end of 2009 or early 2010.

And now it's time to look ahead to the next book. After all, my deadline on Red Hood's Revenge is only 365 days away....

Good news incoming! I'm hoping to have contracts in hand some time this week, at which point I'll share the details. This isn't an announcement on the scale of, say, David Anthony Durham's deal with Hollywood. Mine is more of a mini-announcement. But I think it's pretty dang cool.

Oh, and 63 comments on Spock's penis? You people are weird. (And I say that with love and with full awareness that about 1/3 of those comments are actually mine ;-)

I'm currently going through The Mermaid's Madness one more time before turning this sucker in. (Deadline is Friday.) I've got a half-page list of things I decided to change as I was writing draft four, things like fixing one character's motivation, adjusting my mermaid's relationship with her human prince, changing the name of my ship's captain to something that feels mroe in keeping with her character. Some are simple find/replace fixes, while others require more time.

One thing I'm realizing is that I could very easily do a complete 5th rewrite. Heck, I suspect going through the book again would help me find even more things to change, or inspire new ideas to add into the story, and I could end up doing a 6th rewrite. And then a 7th, an 8th, and so on. One of the most frustrating things about rewriting is that there's no clear finish line. There is never, and never will be, a perfect book. Which means your goal is to make the book "Good enough".

What that means will vary. Good enough might be minimally competent, or it might be brilliant, but it can always be better. And I hate settling for good enough.

This is one area where deadlines are helpful. "Good enough" becomes "As good as I can make it by August 1". It also helps a lot to know that my editor and agent, as well as my wife (and hopefully another beta reader or two whom I need to bug soon) will be reading and offering feedback, and I trust them to hold both me and themselves to high standards of good enough.

I think The Mermaid's Madness is pretty good. When I manage to get any distance, I realize there are a lot of really cool elements to the story. I've fixed the glaring problems I've been able to find, and at this point it's pretty much an act of faith that yes, this book is good enough to turn in. (Or will be come Friday.) Just like I'm having to trust that it will be good enough for publication, and that by the time the book actually comes out, I'll probably love it again.

But you're still left with the knowledge that good enough can always be better. That every book and every story you publish could have been stronger. And that's one more reason why writers go a little crazy from time to time...

My agent Joshua Bilmes reported some of his recent foreign sales over at SF Scope. Get this bit. "Jim C. Hines, who Bilmes says 'has become the most successful author in Germany for JABberwocky Literary Agency,' had a short story collection picked up by his German publishers Bastei. Polish rights to his Goblin War went to Fabryka Slow."

Wow. Considering JABberwocky represents Tanya Huff, Simon Green, Elizabeth Moon, and lots of other people who are much more impressive than I am ... just wow.

Fortunately, slogging through the latest rewrite was more than enough to bring my ego back down to earth.

Who was the comedian who talked about memory being in our backsides? When you get up to go do something, you end up forgetting what it was. But then if you sit down again, Bam! You remember the moment your butt hits the chair.

Writing works the opposite way. You can sit at your desk for an hour, staring at a silly little one-page scene that just doesn't want to work. Then at the end of your lunch break, you get up to use the restroom, and by the time you've walked thirty feet, Bam! Of course the scene doesn't work. You have to move the silly thing to the end of the chapter!

Clearly writers keep our brains in our behinds, and sitting for too long cuts off the blood flow. That's why it's important to get up and walk around every once in a while.

11 days until deadline. Just in case anyone else wants to count along with me.

1. Backstory is nice. Frontstory is good too, though. Sigh ... Between drafts 2 and 3, I changed the captain of the queen's ship into a character with (in my opinion) a much more interesting background. I needed more non-human characters, and this one's fun. Or she would be, if she actually did anything. She can't just be there to show off what a nifty backstory idea I had. Sure, she's a relatively minor character, but as they say, every character is the hero of his/her own story. They all have desires and needs motivating them to act, and figuring those out -- even for the minor characters -- makes them all much more interesting to read about. Unfortunately, this clicked in the middle of the current revision, which means I'll get to go through the book yet another time to edit her scenes. Fortunately, she doesn't have that many :-)

2. Don't ignore plot threads. There's a romantic plot thread in The Stepsister Scheme which I absolutely love. It's a minor bit, getting maybe one page at most, but it's one of my favorite things about the book. While writing Mermaid, I realized I couldn't just leave that romantic thread where it was. Stagnation is annoying. I never thought about where I might go with this potential relationship, but anything I do with it is better than doing nothing. And now that I've been thinking about the possibilities, I really like what I could do with this over the next few books.

3. The ideas never stop coming. I continue to think up fun ways to change this book and make it better. Right now, I'm still racing to incorporate as many of those ideas as I can. The thing is, I suspect I'll continue to think of more ideas after the book is turned in. In other words, the thing is never going to feel done, nor is it ever going to be perfect. So I shouldn't aim for making it perfect. Instead, I think making it Damn Good is an acceptable alternative :-)

4. Escalate. The early drafts had a huge problem. The first 3/4 of the book centered around my princesses solving a particular crisis, which they did. Yay! And then we found a new, bigger crisis, and spent the last 1/4 of the book solving that. That doesn't work. The book felt done at the 3/4 mark. Instead, I had to rework things so that even as we're resolving smaller parts of the crisis, other pieces are escalating, increasing the tension throughout the book until we get to the real ending. Structure is a good thing.

I've already worked on this book for a year or so, and I'm sure there are many more lessons, but none of them spring to mind. So instead I'll just post a quick progress bar, mostly for myself, showing how many pages I've got left in this latest go-round with the book. Whee...

Happy bookday to Sherwood Smith (sartorias), whose third Inda novel King's Shield [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] comes out today!


Today I ought to hit 80,000 words on the rewrite of Mermaid's Madness. The 3rd rewrite, for those keeping score at home. This is pretty good, considering I started over again on May 14. Unfortunately, it's not good enough.

Another week of writing should see this draft finished, at which point I get to go through it one more time, a process I expect to take a few more weeks to do right. My deadline is exactly one month away, so this is still doable.

Problem: My family is going up to the U.P. for vacation starting tomorrow.

Solution: I will probably be staying at home and going up early next week.

In other words, about half of my vacation is now going to be spent alone in the house, fixing this book. This was actually my wife's suggestion. She's been amazingly supportive about all of the extra work I've been putting in during the evenings and on weekends to get this book done.

I've struggled with writing before. I've talked some about the depression and the emotional ups and downs. But I think this is the first time I've resented being a writer. I've been frustrating at not being able to spend more time with the kids in the evenings lately, but usually I can still take some time to play and roughhouse and such. This is different. I've been away for conventions and such before, but this is our vacation, and I'm missing more than one or two nights.

It's been suggested I just tell my editor I'm going to blow the deadline, and ask for an extension. That's ... not something I'm willing to do at this point. I understand authors miss deadlines sometimes. However, I've started to build a reputation as someone who's reliable about getting things done and in on time, and I prefer not to damage that reputation if I don't have to. There's also the fact that pushing back deadlines probably means pushing back the rest of the schedule, and I'm at the point in my career where I'm working (a little desperately) to build an audience. Delaying books is not going to help that.

It's always a choice, thus the subject line*. I don't have to like the alternatives, but I still recognize it's a choice. Even as I was struggling to make the choice, I kept thinking about the next book, which is due August 1 of 2009 ... once again, right after our July 4 U.P. trip. The whole situation has me thinking a lot harder about what I will and won't sacrifice for the writing career. (Boundaries that grow harder to set now that the writing career is paying a significant portion of the bills ... sigh.)

Please note that I'm not asking for advice here. But y'all had damn well better like these books. That's all I'm saying :-P

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*There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, for the handful of readers who aren't familiar with Heinlein.

If you get an outfit, you can be a writer too!

Sorry. Earlier this week I taught my three year old to sing "I yelled fire when I fell into the chocolate" so now I'm on a Smothers Brothers kick*.

Anyway, a long time ago, call it a year or two B.N. (Before Novels), I used to post a chart on my web site showing how many submissions, rejections, and acceptances I had collected for that year. Someone eventually told me this was a bad idea, since ... well, there were a lot of rejections. As a working writer, did I really want to advertise those?

Well, yeah! In part, it kept me motivated to keep submitting and getting stories back out there. I also believe rejections are a normal part of the writing process, and so maybe sharing mine was a way to be in some small way a writing mythbuster, showing that most writers don't just don the outfit** and step onto the front page of Locus with instant fame and success.

But I find myself with similar questions about how much I should share when it comes to my struggles with the mermaid book. For one thing, this blog is a lot more widely read than my old web site ever was, and while there are an awful lot of writers reading this, there are a decent number of fans as well. How many times can I gripe about plot structure or uncooperative characters or my own neuroses before people start to absorb the underlying message that this book obviously isn't going to be any good?

I'm not too worried about that one. Mermaid won't be out for probably a year and a half, give or take. By then, memory of my griping should have faded a bit, to be replaced by memory of me blogging about how awesome the cover art is and I can't wait for this book to come out and live would just be perfect if only book three weren't giving me such trouble :-P

However, in the back of my mind, I'm also aware that me complaining about the same thing over and over will eventually get old, and then my friends list will shrink and I will be sad and have to eat ice cream to make myself feel better, which will mess up my blood sugar and then the doctor will have to amputate my foot.

The cause of this internal debate is the 3 hours I spent last night, pacing through the house, scribbling notes on scraps of paper, swearing under my breath, and generally trying to figure out why Mermaid still wasn't working. Eventually, it clicked: the problem is that I'm an idiot. Well, it felt that way, at any rate. This is the same point where I stumbled a month and a half ago, which led to my decision to rewrite the whole book. The rewrite made some great changes, but as it turns out, I managed to miss the single largest structural problem with the book: the fact that the climax comes about 75% through, and then suddenly I send everyone off in a radically new and unforeshadowed direction.

I'm turning this book in to my editor in exactly 36 days. I could ask for an extension on my deadline, but I really don't want to do that. So I'm going to finish up the current 15K - 20K words I've got left in this rewrite, but with changes. Awesome changes. And then I'll go back through the manuscript and try to work those changes into the other 70K words.

See, an hour or so after I finally realized that--Duh!--plots should be coherent, I then figured out how to unify my two separate climaxes. And holy crap, what's wrong with me that I didn't come up with this idea a year ago, because it's perfect*. It fits with the Little Mermaid story, it allows me to make snarky comments about Danielle, it turns my mermaid into a much more fascinating character, it totally fixes the motivation problem I had with a secondary character ... and it works thematically with the things I want to do with this series.

I spent most of yesterday being pissed at myself for not being a better writer. For not figuring out what was wrong with this book months ago. For making such an obvious structural mistake. This will be my fifth novel with DAW; shouldn't I know how to do this by now?

But of course, that's one of the reasons I do think it's important to share the struggle. Because I know I'm not the only published author who still struggles. Because, when I stop to think about it, most of the authors I know admit to hitting this sort of wall. (And I suspect those who don't admit it are just shy.) I was pissed off because a part of me was still buying into the myth that "real authors" don't go through this crap.

Guess what. We do. It sucks. But it's also normal. And by the way? This book will rock by the time I'm done with it.

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*It's mrissa's fault that my son was singing about the chocolate before bedtime last night.

**Sez the guy who owns a special writing jacket.

***Perfection only guaranteed until I actually start writing again. However, it's still a nifty idea, and should make a damn good book.

Mermaid update: 18,800 words. I've gotten through the first three chapters. Chapter four gets messier, but I've got it mostly figured out.

I've been pushing myself pretty hard on this rewrite, which means I'm not spending as much time thinking of clever and entertaining things to blog about. But then I realized I can make that work for me. Rather than wracking my brain for another thrilling post, I could simply ask all of you what you'd like me to talk about. It's a win-win situation. I can concentrate on clever things to do to my characters, and you can read about things guaranteed to be of interest.

It sounds good in theory, anyway.

So fire away. Specific questions are welcome, as are more general suggestions. More writing scam rants? Behind-the-scene publishing stuff? Hidden secrets of the gobiln kama sutra? No topic is out of bounds, though I reserve the right to bacon-slap you if your suggestions are too far on the silly side.

Mermaid update: After a week of rewriting (again), I'm up to 16,400 words. I projected having to do at least 1200/day to make my deadline. So far, so good!

I'm still trying to master point of view, which slowed me down last night. Mermaid's Madness will have four points of view. Danielle, the single PoV character from Stepsister, will still be the primary viewpoint character. Snow and Talia will be secondary, and my mermaid Lirea will also have some scenes throughout the book.

Determining which of my three heroines to write from in each scene trips me up from time to time. The logical, structured part of my brain wants to set a firm rule. If Danielle is present, it's her scene. If she's not, it's Snow's or Talia's, as appropriate to the moment. This would give Danielle the bulk of the book, but still allow the other two their own scenes. But in the earlier part of the book, when they're all together, it means long stretches of nothing but Danielle.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. The first book was all Danielle, so I can obviously do that. But I'm also enjoying the chance to explore things from the other princesses' points of view.

So maybe we break that rule to add more variety. Allow dramatic necessity to rule the book. Who is the most emotionally invested in any particular scene? Whose perspective would be the most interesting? The most fun? Suddenly things become a lot more subjective.

I hate subjective. I was a math geek, and I like nice, clearcut rules and answers. Which means I'm probably in the wrong business :-P

Like so many aspects of writing, I don't think there's any one right way to do this. I'm finding that I can write many of these scenes equally well from anyone's PoV, and each version creates a scene that's interesting and exciting for different reasons. In part, this comes from having done a one-sentence summary of each character's core conflict. Writing for Talia? Well, her conflict for the book is X, so let's tweak the scene to show more of that. Switching over to Danielle? Replace a few paragraphs to show her struggles, which are very different from Talia's. Each choice reveals certain things about the story, but hides others.

Three books in print, and I'm still learning. That's exciting. Scary, but exciting. Makes me wonder what new challenges I'll run into when I start writing Red Hood's Revenge!

Brief PSA: Please note that JABberwocky (my agency) is closed to queries until further notice.

Mermaid's Madness 3.0 continues apace. The first two chapters are done. Again. I'm up to 14,299 words so far, thanks in part to my wife, who took the kids to a park yesterday so Daddy could have some writing time.

I have no less than three announcements I want to share, some good and some less so. Unfortunately, I can't. Argh!!! So instead, I'll find something else to gripe about.

Irene Gallo, Art Director at Tor, announced that artist Donato Giancola had won an award for his work. She included a picture he did for Kathleen Bryan's book The Golden Rose [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy].

I was studying the picture, and I noticed the gills of the merfolk, right beneath the rib cage. It's brilliant, and I was instantly frustrated that I couldn't steal it for my own. I've already established how gills and various other anatomical oddities work for my merfolk, but in this case, I like what Bryan did better. (I'm assuming the rib-level gills are from the author, not an innovation by the artist. I could be mistaken.)

Visually, this is incredibly striking. The shape of the gills fits there, and at the same time, it makes the merfolk distinctly alien in appearance.

I'm chalking this up to how every author (and artist) can take the same core idea and run in a different direction with it. There will always be things other people do that make us say "Damn, I wish I'd thought of that." I just hope I'm making at least a few other writers do the same :-)

The third rewrite of Mermaid's Madness is off to a good start. 1800 words during my lunch break, and another 1200 at home (in between 3-year-old tantrums, because someone needed a longer nap). This is the easy part, of course. The further I get into the book, the more changes I'll be making, which will slow me down. Still, so far so good!

Yesterday's e-mail also brought in the Czech cover of Goblin Hero [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy]. I'm very pleased with this one. The details might not match up exactly with what I expected, but they did a nice job with Jig, and it's nice to see some of the other goblins and hobgoblins, along with a big ol' ogre. Click the thumbnail for the full view. You can also visit the Goblin Artwork page on my web site for all of the alternate goblin covers, along with fan art.

Finally, I forgot to mention a book launch. Earlier this week, fellow SFNovelist Jeri Smith-Ready (jer_bear711) launched her latest book Wicked Game [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy]. Dude, I've got two words for you: vampire DJs. Smith-Ready also has a few interviews popping up all over the blogosphere. Click here and go read more on David B. Coe's LJ.

Finally, and completely unrelated to anything else, please send good car repair vibes that my old Cavalier's oil leak will be easily found and cheaply repaired!